In association with

Read My Lips [2002]
from Pathe Distribution
starring Vincent Cassel, Emmanuelle Devos
directed by Jacques Audiard

Features:

• PAL
• Widescreen

Editorial Review:

Workplace dramas seem to have become a French speciality, and Jacques Audiard's Read My Lips ("Sur mes levres") proves a worthy follow-up to such notable predecessors in the genre as Human Resources and Time Out ("L'Emploi du temps"). The film also nods towards Neil LaBute's In the Company of Men and Hitchcock's Rear Window, but it's none the worse for that. Carla, our anti-heroine (Emmanuelle Devos), is an ugly duckling working as a secretary for a construction company in suburban Paris. Dowdy and all-but deaf, she's exploited and put upon by her male coworkers. When her boss lets her hire an assistant she bizarrely chooses Paul (Vincent Cassel), a scruffy and none-too-bright ex-con. But an odd symbiosis grows up between this pair of losers; the combination of his petty-criminal skills and her lip-reading abilities has certain potentials.

As A Self-Made Hero, his previous movie, showed, Audiard doesn't go in for lovable characters. Carla is no long-suffering saint and Paul is frankly sleazy, but this just makes their interaction all the more intriguing. Devos, glowering malevolently beneath her dark brows, and Cassel with his greasy hair and ratty moustache, turn in relishably truculent and un-starry performances, and Audiard deftly manages the transition from office comedy to gangland heist thriller with no grinding of gears. By the end the plot starts to strain belief, but it scarcely matters. The noir-ish lighting and potent use of hand-held close-ups enhance the film's sense of nervous unease, and there's ingenious use of sound to convey Carla's hearing-impaired world. Downbeat and unblinkingly amoral, Read My Lips offers pleasures that a glossier treatment would have missed entirely.

On the DVD: Read My Lips has no extras on the disc beyond the trailer. But the transfer is clean and crisp, offering the full-width original ratio, and the Dolby sound captures the all-important subtleties of the soundtrack flawlessly. --Philip Kemp

Customer Reviews:

• Avg. Customer Rating: 4.5 / 5.0

• Cracker
  this is a cracking little thriller, good plot,decent acting, quite pacy keeps you wondering how it will end.

• never underestimate anyone
  this is a great, very clever and intelligent film, quite pacey and always getting to its point! well worth the money too.
  the two main characters come together through there different needs and despite there less than honourable intentions towards each other soon realise they need each other.
  turning diss-advantage to advantage on both sides

• Cracking French thriller
  This is a really unusual film in terms of plot, acting and style. Both the female and male lead are hardly the most attractive of French actors and yet there is a sexy sizzle that runs throughout - intense, passionate and exciting. Running parallel is a brutal story of extortion, theft and murder. Absolutely cracking thriller - only the French can make the hearing impaired sexy!
  

• great plot
  French cinema at its best for what it is good at: complex plots in realistic settings, great acting. The other reviewer have said it all. Go watch it.

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